After about seven minutes of introductions and congratulatory resolutions (starting with one by John Bell Williams, who would later become Governor) Putnam gave this speech:


I am grateful for this chance to refresh my point of view among people of your outlook. We obviously share certain ideals that we have inherited from the early days and which we intend to preserve. Those ideals are timeless. They’re not affected by winds of change. They’re as steadfast as our self respect, our independence of mind and our love for our homes and our families. Mississippi is the heartland of the struggle for racial integrity. You’re not an unkindly people, but you are and experienced people. You know your own conditions. Unlike some cities of the south, the news papers of Jackson are not controlled by northerners. [Applause]

You have not fallen victim to this ceaseless barrage of false science, false sentimentality and false political theory, with which, so many sections of the north, all of the north, and so many sections of the south, are being inundated. Your leaders are not selling your heritage or your children for a block of votes. [Applause]

Nor are you persuaded by the fantasy that in order to please everybody all over the world you must give away everything that your forefathers earned for you over a thousand years of effort and self discipline. You may be willing to give money within reason, to please the Congo, but you’re not willing to give your children. The capital of Mississippi is still in Jackson – it’s not in ‘Leopoldville’. [Applause]

For all this, as I say, I’m really grateful but at the same time, I can’t close my eyes anymore than you can close yours to the realities of the situation. In spite of the unassailable logic of your position you’re under harassment and attack from all sides. The dean of the Harvard law school fumes with fury at the mention of Mississippi. The kindly housewife in Wisconsin turns away at the name Jackson. I’m sure you often wonder why. And since there is an old adage, that to get anything done, you must first find the problem, I’m going to inquire ‘What is the problem, in this case?’

Some of you may answer ‘well, it’s or course, the Supreme Court decision of 1954.’ Others are wont to say that its power hungry centralists trying to destroy the rights of the states. Still others will say that its minority group pressure and infiltration of communism. Now, in my judgment, to some extent, all those things are true. All of them are problems, but they all exist because of something else. If you could correct the fundamental difficulty, these others will disappear. And I speak from an embroilment in this matter as you know, about three years now, from Seattle to Miami and from Maine to California.

To understand this basic problem, I must clarify one issue. For a long time, a running battle has been going on among scientists, concerning the race question. It can be put in a nutshell by saying that a cult has developed along the left wing school of political thought which tries to prove that environment is completely responsible for all differences between races. That nothing is due to inborn or inherent qualities. Now obviously, if this could be proved, it would lend support to a variety of social programs. It still would not, in my opinion, eliminate a man’s responsibility for himself, nor would it mean that social and cultural similarities are desirable ideals. But as far as races and sub-stocks are concerned, it would remove many obstacles. And it certainly is the sort of thing which our minority groups of every color and race would welcome.

The difficulty is that is has no foundation in fact. Almost everyone is ready to admit that heredity makes a difference in individuals within a single race; and to maintain that this process stops when we compare averages and qualities between races is a strange and forced bit of wishful thinking. Science of course, does not dismiss anything because it seems strange and forced. But the burden of proof is clearly upon those who would deny the obvious, and this burden of proof, no equalitarian scientist has been able to sustain. I can’t, tonight, go into full detail on this question. I can only summarize and refer you to the books and documentation. But in sum, the idea that all races are equal in their adaptability to our Western culture, took root in America in the classrooms of Franz Boas at Columbia University in the late 1920’s.

With Boas, as students or assistants, we find the names of: Otto Klineberg, Melville Herskovits, Gene Weltfish and Ashley Montagu. Gene Weltfish later became a member of certain organizations cited by the attorney general as subversive and publicly announced that she had evidence to prove that the United States used germ warfare in Korea. Some of the others were doubtless sincere or perhaps biased by their personal backgrounds. I’m not sure about all of them. After Boas died, Columbia brought in Ralph Lyndon who dismissed all the Boas employees who had no tenure. And the University finally dropped Weltfish on the grounds of too long tenure.

But the Boas group, in America at least, was the beginning of the environmental ideology as far science was concerned. Russia made its contribution in Lysenko, who claimed that wheat could be turned into rye and these men drew to them other scientists with leftist inclinations in Europe and throughout the United States. They built up quite a team, at Harvard, Columbia and other universities here and abroad.

As the New Deal came along and we went further left, in the United States, they fitted in with a client. In fact they became a dominant academic power. It wasn’t long before they were able to dictate policy. And eventually a whole generation of American young people were delivered into their hands.

Now persecution scientists who disagreed with them became one of their techniques. In Russia of course, this was easy: Scientists who contradicted Lysenko were simply arrested. In the so-called free world, the matter had to be handled a bit more subtly. It will be apparent to you that I can’t here tonight name names - I’ve proved my point by being unable, in this case, to prove it. It’s because there is a risk of persecution that I can’t call specific witnesses. But I can cite cases; and I can ask that you accept my word for their genuine.

So I’ll mention the southern anthropologist who wrote me using such terms as ‘avoidance’ and ‘suppression’ and ‘discouragement of research’.

I will cite from the northern sociologist who, having made a statement on the non-equalitarian side, went back to his university and was told: ‘We won’t fire you; that would be too obvious. But as long as you stay here, you will never get a promotion and you’ll never get a raise in pay.’

I’ll mention the Middle Western psychologist who wrote me not where in the United States could a psychologist, sociologist or anthropologist find work if he openly espoused the theory of racial inequality.

I’ll mention my experience with one the world’s most distinguished anthropologists who asked me, after I had seated myself in his living room, in a northern city, ‘Are you sure you haven’t been followed?’

And I’ll add still another scientist who’s said ‘I can’t commit academic suicide. I still have work to do. But, when I retire…’

Now, at his point, I’d like to turn to the northern press. To the northern radio and broadcasting networks and ask them now ‘What do you think, of this business?’ I’d like to ask Luce and Jackson and Time and Life and Dreyfus and Salzburg and The New York Times ‘How much longer are you going to vilify the South on the basis of evidence spawned under these conditions? You call this academic freedom? And if we don’t have academic freedom, what kind of freedom do we have?’ And what about some of you so-called “Southern” newspapers? Now I salute the Jackson press; but what of Alabama, what about Dallas, what about Memphis? How much effort have you given to studying the situation? I’d like to say to you who are the servants of northern masters, that I’d rather quit my job than to betray my people in my hometown. [applause] I’d rather die poor than mislead my neighbors about something that’s as important as this. I’d rather…do almost anything than corrupt the thinking of a father and mother across the street. Men who will do that are in the same class as the businessmen who favor integration because they fear resistance may hurt their pocket books. I wouldn’t want to sell my descendant’s future for thirty pieces of silver, but there’s no accounting for taste these days. [applause] I shall comeback to this subject later; but first, I want to explore a few other parts of the picture.

The followers of Boas had no difficulty, for instance, in capturing the United Nations; because it goes without saying, that at the United Nations, the wishful filling attraction of the environmentalist doctrine reached its height. You might expect committees to set up at the UN to prove all sorts of equalitarian doctrine and that’s precisely what you do find. You find it most notably, in the UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) of 1950 and 1951 on the subject of race, signed by a long list of scientists which is flaunted in the faces of the north at all times.

The first statement, in 1950 was signed by Klineberg, Montagu and Myrdal, the Swedish socialist; we don’t find Weltfish, we find that man named Ginsberg from England and Levi Strauss from France. Juan Comas signed from Mexico, and there’ll be more to say about him in just a moment.

You may wonder why it was necessary to issue a second statement so soon after the first one. The published reason was that some of the contentions in the first statement and some of the terms used were “much criticized especially by physical anthropologists and geneticists.” Now they’re the ones of course who know the most about this subject. Then we read, “they”, (the scientific critics of the first statement) “also declined to acknowledge as a proved fact that there are no mental differences between racial groups, and stressed that there was insufficient evidence to support that view. “

So, they issued a second statement in 1951 which carried water on both shoulders a little better and made it possible to bring a few more signatures under the tent. Now let me give you an example. On one page we find this sentence, and I’ll quote it to you: “Available scientific knowledge provides no basis for the belief that the groups of mankind differ, in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development. “ Now on the page directly opposite, we read: “It’s possible, though not proved, that some types of innate capacity for intellectual and emotional responses are commoner in one group than another.”

Now it is surprising that the president of one of the scientific societies most concerned with this subject wrote me a few weeks ago the two contradictory statements invalidate the whole thing. The fact that a certain person signed it means little about his personal convictions.

Now remember that public opinion in the north doesn’t have a chance to analyze the situation as we’re analyzing it here. All they are given is the propaganda that they’ve gotten from this equalitarian statement. All they get is the general impression of agreement. Remember too, what I said at the outset about the burden of proof. A scientist can’t deny the obvious (what we see when we look at Africa, Haiti or our own crime statistics, plus all the evidence in history) without himself accepting the burden of proof. You don’t abandon all the experience of mankind, flaunt established tradition and annihilate the status quo on the basis of an ideological guess. You don’t crucify the south on a cross of wish fulfilling scientific fantasy. This propaganda, I must emphasize, has two parts. Its proponents are not satisfied with preaching a wish fulfilling gospel; they try to persuade you, and, particularly the north, that all other scientists agree with it. And let me show you how false that is.

You have, first of all, the four distinguished men who signed the introduction to RACE AND REASON. In July of 1961 one of these men, Dr. Henry Garrett, wrote an article from a non-equalitarian viewpoint for the Mankind Quarterly. Thereupon Garrett and the Mankind Quarterly were attacked by our friend Comas at the University of Mexico in an article in Current Anthropology. The editor of Current Anthropology, one Saul Tax, first submitted Comas’ article to 21 scientists for their comments. And these comments were published with the article. The selection of the 21 scientists by Saul Tax and the resulting cross-section of opinion, gives us a strange sort of a ballot on this issue; not a secret ballot, nor one in which the voters acted as free agents, greeting their remarks as a sort of interesting exercise in how to escape committing oneself. In fact, I had to scrutinize each opinion carefully (coupling at sometimes with what I knew about the voter himself) to find out what it implied.

Giving the benefit of the doubt in every case to the equalitarian side, I would estimate that 14 of the 21 would agree with Comas, which looks, off hand, like two thirds of endorsement to the equalitarianism. The trick here is that six out of the 21 voted from behind the Iron Curtain. They’re scientists living in communist countries where the party line requires strict conformity. Eliminate those six and you see what happens to the ratio – it becomes a settlement. And you started with a list of voters chosen by an equalitarian. I place only minor emphasis on this episode because I don’t believe that in the present climate a fear of reprisal and general timidity, we can get a count of scientists that means much. We laymen will have to read the books on each side understanding the background against which they’re written. And make up our own minds where the truth lies.

Having done this myself I would be willing to put the matter into the hands of any intelligent jury. I might say here, that RACE AND REASON has been in circulation for about six months. And there is yet to be any serious attempt to attack it scientifically – at least, none has come to my attention. There have been a few reviewers who have referred to my book as full of errors and contradictions; but unfortunately, none of these reviewers have had the time to point the errors or the contradictions out. The nearest attempt was an article in the EUGENICS REVIEW signed by a doctor in the public health service and the gist of his attack was as follows: “With respect to the sort of hereditary variations that might influence adaptation to civilization, an individual’s manifest traits are the best guide to his genotype. Thus, even when intermarriage is in question, science demands that each person be considered on his merits.”

Now, if that’s science then I’m speaking tonight in Italian because such a comment, in effect, negates the influence of heredity entirely except as it may express itself in one individual in one generation. It assumes that a brilliant son of a stupid father may not in turn have a stupid son – a position that no trained geneticist would accept for a moment. Perhaps the writer expects to give his assertion plausibility by his phrase ‘with respect to the sort of hereditary variations that might influence adaptation to civilization’ but I’ve got to point out that the fissuration of the frontal lobes of the brain which is the now recognized as an index of the higher forms of intelligence, is just as much a matter of heredity as skin color. The writer also makes the epigrammatic remark that marriages are contracted between individuals not between races, forgetting that when enough individuals marry the races in effect do marry, that much of the breeding is non-selective, and that the end result is a wide distribution of negro gene traits through the white race. This is what accounts for the general deterioration always found in the resultant culture.

At the risk of being accused of a lack of modesty, I’m tempted to tell those of you who wish to use RACE AND REASON as a tool in this controversy, that Dr. Ruggles Gates who signed the introduction has no superior in the field of human genetics. That he is the author of the definitive work in this field and that he has been kind enough to write Dr. Garrett a personal letter last March in which he spoke, in a not entirely uncomplimentary way, of RACE AND REASON. One of his comments is printed on the jacket of the paperback edition. Until we get something more solid than the article in the Eugenics Review, I’m content to rest my position on that comment.

Now, let me turn to another part of the picture. I know this science is a little dull, but it’s necessary to what I want to say in conclusion. The situation would be bad enough, if we had only to deal with these left wing pseudo-scientists; but we’re faced with something else. Out of the scientific cloisters exudes a doctrine which seeps into the churches, into the press, into the movies and other mass media, until all the instruments for molding public opinion are corrupted.

Now, let me give you a rather startling illustration. In my hand, I hold a pamphlet written by one Father C. J. McNaspy, S.J. (Society of Jesuits). It bears the nihil obstat of Austin B. Vaughn, Doctorate of Sacred Theology, the imprimatur of Francis Cardinal Speldman, and we’re told that these things guarantee the pamphlet’s freedom from moral error. It’s called “let’s talk sense about the Negro.” Yet on page 14 we find these two sentences: “If some Negroes show tendencies toward delinquency, if they suffer from lack of ambition, lack of drive, apathy, we may blame this on the environment we have compelled them to live in, not on some imagined inferiority in their biology. This is not my opinion; it is the conviction of all scientific psychologists and anthropologists.” Now, no one wants to stress the importance of environment more than I do. No one wants to improve the Negros’s environment more than I do. But it would be difficult to find a more profound, a more complete, and a more inexcusable falsehood than McNaspy’s last sentence. The whole statement is the rank of sort of environmentalism coupled with the assertion that all scientists agree with them. I don’t have to go back and quote Professors Gates, Garrett, etc… to you now. But apparently Fr. McNaspy knows nothing about them. I can’t bring myself to believe that he knows. And if he doesn’t know, he should. He had no business putting out a pamphlet like this unless he had made some study of such issues.


Or take this article by the Episcopal bishop of Michigan, June 4 this year. It’s an attack on RACE AND REASON in the Detroit News, in which the Bishop, one Richard Emrich brings Abraham Lincoln into the argument and notice the way he does it. He says, “Abraham Lincoln’s clear mind can lead us to see the heart of this struggle which is still America’s chief agony.” The bishop doesn’t pause to consider who started this most recent agony. “The logic of segregation, discrimination, or exclusion, leads to the destruction of all civil liberties everywhere. Why? Because, says one man writing about Lincoln, the essence of his position was that the principle of exclusion has no inner check. That arbitrarily barring one minority from the exercise of his rights can be both a precedent and a moral sanction of barring another and that it creates a frame of mind from which no one can expect justice or security.”

Now, to examine the minor error in this thing first, am I correct in my recollection that our American Republic has been in existence since 1787? That between that time and 1954 we’ve grown from very small beginnings to be the leading free society of the world. And that during all of that time we had segregated schools in the south, and if I am correct in my recollection, I would like to ask Bishop Emrich what he means when he says ‘The logic of segregation leads to the destruction of all civil liberties everywhere.’ Jesus tells us to love God with all our minds as well as with all our hearts and I’ll ask Bishop Emrich, ‘where was your mind when you wrote that sentence?’ But, in my judgment, this is the minor fallacy in the quotation from the bishop. You notice he talks about Lincoln’s ‘clear mind’ and then he phrases matters in such a way that you get the impression that what he quotes next is practically a citation from Lincoln on segregation. Actually, Emrich’s words are: “says one man writing about Lincoln, the essence of his position was….” And so forth. Certainly I don’t have to tell this audience what Lincoln actually said about the Negro: “I am not nor have I ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” How true that was in 1858. By the end of the civil war, Lincoln had made it plain that he hoped very intelligent “Negroes” might be given the franchise by the state Governments. And I wouldn’t hesitate to assume that today Lincoln would pay for a franchise on the same basis for very intelligent Negroes under the control of the states. However, there is no indication anywhere that Lincoln today would approve forced social integration between whites and blacks in the south. Yet Bishop Emrich deliberately offers us what some unnamed person thought Lincoln thought when he had on the record what Lincoln actually said.

Now I have difficulty in understanding the mentality of men who misrepresent Lincoln’s position on the Negro. In fact, I’m inclined to quote further here from Lincoln for the benefit of both the Bishop and the editor of the Detroit News. On September 16, 1859, Lincoln, in a speech, was commenting on an editor who had distorted his views. So where I quote editor, you can supply ‘of the Detroit News’ and can also supply ‘Bishop Emrich’. I now quote from Lincoln: “Having shown you this, there remains but a word of comment on this newspaper article. It is this, that I presume the editor of that paper is an honest and truth loving man and that he will be very greatly obliged to me for furnishing him thus early an opportunity to correct the misrepresentation he has made before it is run so long that some malicious person may call him a liar.”

Now, is Bishop Emrich as well as Fr. McNaspy the victims of ignorance? We can only hope so; because otherwise the moral deterioration in our churches is alarming to say the least. Earlier this evening, I addressed a question to the leaders of the northern press. I’d now like to address myself to the clergy and to them I’d like to say: There’s been no case in history where whites and blacks have integrated without destruction of the white civilization. And there is no human right greater than the right of a civilization to defend itself against such destruction. That right you would watch the government take forcibly from the south while you sit with your hands folded in prayer. I’m tired of empty phrases with no thought behind them. I’m tired of the sort of combined ignorance and stupidity shown by your McNaspys and your Emrichs. I’m tired of your timid conformity with the popular drift. And finally, I’m tired of your milk and water suggestions that we pass the responsibility to God while you support a policy which forces the white children of the South, against the wishes of their parents, into associations that they understand better than you do. You pose as idealists; yet you hide behind the curtain room while you condone a crime against 50 million Americans.

Now there are two things in this state of affairs that I want to stress. One is that the environmental ideology is false or better still to say perhaps that it’s the worst kind of a half truth which can do more damage than the fallacy. The second thing is that nevertheless, this fallacy, this half truth, has gained complete possession of the northern and Western mind. Some perhaps many of the leaders of our press, our clergy, our entertainment, our colleges and our politics may recognize the fallacy and either through timidity or stupidity are pressing on with it just the same. But my experience has satisfied me that the great majority of northerners are simply misled. I’m talking now of the inarticulate masses of the people who only speak at the polls. The scientists, the educators, the editors and the churchmen make it easy for northern politicians who nowadays would much prefer to do what they think a misinformed public wants rather than to take the trouble to inform them properly. I’m reminded by contrast, of a comment that was made on the duty of station ship by quite a different kind of a leader, a generation ago. This leader remarked, “People used to say that I was an astonishingly good politician because I defined what the people were going to think; this really was not an accurate way of stating the case. I did not define how the people are going to think. I made up my mind what they ought to think and then did my best to get them to think it.” If we had leaders of that kind today, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Certainly we haven’t got such leaders in the north and the question in the federal administration is can the south supply them?

Let me restate the situation. We have in the north a great body of public opinion hypnotized by the belief that all the Negro’s limitations are environmental. That the only reason why he does not appear to be the white man’s equal is because the white man has forced him into an inferior environment – has held him back, as they say, not only in the United States but also in Africa. Once you accept that idea, it follows logically that white men ought, in justice and morality, take every possible step by way of restitution, to correct the environment – even at the expense of disadvantage to themselves. Over the last several years, I’ve talked or corresponded with thousands of sincere, intelligent Americans and have found this point of view almost universal. I don’t think you here realize how THIS side of the question counts up there. I’ve had it repeated often enough so that I can assure you that it permeates our northern society as a whole. They read an occasional book on science, the books that are kept in front at the bookstores; there they find the environmentalist view, they go to a movie they get it there, on Sundays they here it preached in church. When they turn on TV and they hear news, documentaries and plays - all slanted in the same direction. Their children come home from school with books written by environmentalists. I could go on forever… The point is you have a completely indoctrinated society in the north. On that indoctrination in the integration movement rests. It gives it all the sanctions of a moral crusade. It makes it shine like a Holy Grail. And what’s the south doing about it? It’s talking almost exclusively about states’ rights.

Now, citizens of Mississippi, I give you this as axiomatic. The Supreme Court’s decision on de-segregation simply follows the trend of public opinion in the north and west. And the average man, in the north and west, doesn’t give a damn about state’s rights in the face of his belief that the south is committing a wrong against the Negro. You might as well use states’ rights to justify mass murder. And the northerner goes further. When you talk about states’ rights he thinks to himself ‘sure, the southerner’s willing to plead states’ rights when he wants to brow beat and oppress the Negro, but when it comes to getting his fair hands in the federal treasury, he sings a different tune. In other words, this line of defense not only doesn’t do you any good up north it does you harm. Now I don’t have to repeat that I’m completely in sympathy with the principle of states’ rights. I only say it’s out of place when dealing with your racial problem. Or if you prefer, let’s say you’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked.

In my opinion there is just one solution now to this problem. Tell the north over and over again, that you’re fighting for the integrity of your civilization. Remind them that there has never been a case in history where whites and blacks have lived together without segregation in such numbers as you have in the south today and have failed into intermarrying. Remind them that such intermarriage has always resulted in the deterioration of the white civilization. Point out to them that the facts of science, when viewed through unbiased eyes, support the facts of history. Show them that the historical evidence is what you would expect to find from the scientific evidence; the genetic nature of the latter accounting for the deterioration apparent in the former. Make clear that you have, in most cases, done all you could and a lot more than most to improve environment for the Negro and that you intend to do even more. Continue forward in that are but when it comes to social segregation, say to the north, “Here we stand; four square.” [applause]


Now I need scarcely remark that you should prepare yourselves to meet the reflex action you get from the north. I’ve met it so often and found it so stereotyped and superficial, that it’s hard to take it seriously, but it must be met. When they say to you, “But you can’t hold the Negro back,” answer any race that’s held back by segregation was held back by associating with itself; and such a race had better do something about itself, instead of demanding that another race also be held back by associating with it. [applause]

Or when they suggest that your children don’t have to marry Negroes because they go to school with them, call their attention to the gradually erosive effects of the equalitarian ideology that is implicit in this movement. Remind them that it is not solely a question of the impact on the one generation, but upon a series of generations, each becoming a little less aware of what’s involved. Tell them that time and familiarity coupled with the hypnotic repetition of the equalitarian doctrine can slowly make black seem white and something which had first repelled seem eventually acceptable. I’ll paraphrase these lines which are so important to northerners. Paraphrase Alexander Pope’s famous quatrain for them: “Here is an evil of such frightful need that to be hated needs but to be seen yet, seen too often, familiar with its face, we first endure then pity, then embrace.”

Be on your guard against the leftist who is obsessed with the idea of change; who wants change just because it’s fashionable. And who talks about winds of change. Remind him that every burglar who breaks into a house wants change; he wants to change the possessions, the savings and the heirlooms of the owner who has conserved them through the years. And sometimes nations and races want to do the same thing. Straighten out the north on the ‘all men were created equal’ concept; explain to them that that phrase has never referred to cultural, social or genetic equality – except in communist countries. Our history is full of evidence on the point. And don’t let them seduce you with this notion that you’re image before the world will be damaged by segregation.

It goes without saying that riots are damaging. But what these equalitarians are trying to tell you is that segregation itself is damaging. All you have to do is to ask them which is more important: To keep the integrity of your civilization, to conserve the traditions that your forefathers developed through a thousand years? Or to please some African who thinks freedom is a package that you go down and pick up at the post office? Remind them that if a thing is wrong, you don’t do it to please anybody. Put your heel on this spirit of appeasement – this idea that we must run twittering around smoothing the fur of folly which is the surest way to gain everybody’s contempt. Most important of all, do what you can to persuade southern leaders, governors, mayors and federal representatives, to take advantage of their national radio and television time to put these points across to the northern public. The news papers and magazines are full of items against you every day. TV can’t completely shut you out; however, when some crisis brings one of your leaders into national attention. Or can nothing be done to convince southern leaders, governors, senators, congressmen and mayors to use their precious air time, whether it be on a riot or on open ends, to strike back at this dishonesty, this creeping paralysis of mind and this ignorance? You can’t help asking the question, ‘what’s wrong? What’s holding them back? Why do so few have the discernment of your leaders here in Mississippi? ’

All of us know that no war was ever won by staying on the defensive. When it comes to the racial issue, the states’ rights argument is both defensive and evasive. On the other hand, the racial integrity issue, that you have made, more than any other statement an issue in Mississippi, puts the attack into your hands where it belongs. There you have an issue that has just as much moral sanction, just as much power, just as much of the Holy Grail appeal as any issue on earth. You won’t find a pastor in any church in America who could choose a text to surpass it. There’s your ‘cause’ with a capital ‘C’. With that cause, history is on your side, science is on your side, righteousness is on your side and I’ll go so far as to say the American people are on your side – if you can arouse them and inform them.

A challenge to the parents of America: Say to them, ‘You have any doubts about the genetic foundation of life? Look in that crib tonight and answer the question.’ Say to some of these well meaning and blind northern leftists, ‘If you must take money out of the pocket of a man who earned it and put it into the pocket of a man who didn’t, that’s one thing that may sometimes be justified, less often than you think. Go ahead if you must, and spend other people’s money, but, you hypocrites, stop trying to spend other people’s children!’ [applause]

And please, in conclusion, don’t whisper to yourselves, ‘Isn’t it too late? Haven’t we lost this fight?’ If you take this road, it’s not too late. It’s never too late to go to the heart of this kind of an issue; because when you do, eternal forces come over to your side. There’s something about lifting a banner, like this and keeping it clean, that attracts the unseen as well as the visible. And if there’s one quality that characterized the breed that built America, was that they were not afraid to slap the devil in the face. They didn’t sit down and bargain with him or offer him sacrifices; when men do that, the forces of righteousness desert them. So in the last analysis, if you want to be faithful to the founding fathers, you don’t ask whether you’re going to win; that’s not your affair. The fight, is your affair, do the best you can. I’ll put it in the words of George Washington himself: “Erect a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God.”

Thank You. [Applause, exeunt]